WHAT IS LEADERSHIP?Leadership is an interactive conversation that pulls people toward becoming comfortable with the language of personal responsibility and commitment.

LEADERSHIP TIPS“The crux of leadership development that works is self-directed learning: intentionally developing or strengthening an aspect of who you are or who you want to be, or both.” Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee (Harvard Business School Press)

Donald Trump kept the Miss Universe Pageanttrue to its origins as a swimsuit competition by setting the ceremony in warm-weather locations. Only once did Trump steer the pageant away from temperate environments--in November, 2013, when Miss Universe took place in Russia.

Today, the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow looks like a harbinger of the Trump campaign and Presidency, featuring some of the same themes and characters. Miss Universe represents a paradigmatic example of Trump's business style in action--the exaggerations that teeter into lies, the willingness to embrace dubious partners, the hunger for glamour and recognition. Trump got away with this kind of behavior for decades, and he played by the same rules during his run for the Presidency.

Last Friday, Robert Mueller, the special counsel, unveiled the indictment of thirteen Russian nationals, and three Russian organizations, on charges that they conspired to throw the 2016 election to Trump. The indictment does not explicitly assert that Trump or his campaign knowingly participated in the Russian conspiracy. Trump recognized that the pageant was a useful vehicle for expanding his reach overseas, and no country so consistently kindled his ambitions as Russia.

The extent of Trump's financial ties to Russia remains unclear, but he appears to have had a number of investors and business partners from the former Soviet Union. In 2008, Donald Trump, Jr. told the audience at a real-estate conference, "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets...We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."

Trump, it seems, has never asked his top intelligence officials for an accounting of Russian activities during the campaign or for a plan to stop such efforts from continuing in the future. As a result, the quest for accountability rests largely with the Mueller investigation, which is trying to determine whether Trump and his campaign staff knew about, encouraged, or sponsored the Russian efforts.

Leadership in today's globally connected economy requires moving beyond the authoritarian leadership styles of the past to one that requires more attention to sustainability, ethical cultures, and caring behaviors, while still being geared to enhancing performance.

In LEADING BEYOND THE EGOby John Knights, Danielle Grant, and Greg Young show how intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intelligence can be combined to create "transpersonal leadership." Transpersonal leaders operate beyond their egos. They are radical, ethical, and authentic, while emotionally intelligent and caring.

"To become a transpersonal leader we must bring our values, beliefs and purpose to full consciousness and act on them," says Knights. "To become this kind of leader, an individual needs to be emotionally intelligent in order to have sufficient inner self confidence, awareness and empathy to be able to take this advanced journey."

Transpersonal leaders are able to:

Embed authentic, ethical, and emotionally intelligent behaviors into the DNA of the organization

Build strong, empathetic, and collaborative relationships within the organization and with all stakeholders

Create a performance enhancing culture that is ethical, caring, and sustainable

Transpersonal leadership involves dealing with the conflict between instincts and conscious behavior. Leaders need to raise their level of consciousness to understand that they do have choices and that to be an excellent leader they need to operate beyond the ego.

THE BOOK OF MISTAKES is the inspiring business fable of a young professional named David. Two years into the workforce, David has already become embittered with lost confidence, misdirection, and growing apathy over a list of all-too-familiar stresses.